Monday, March 29, 2010

Rabbits

Just a quick little post from me today. I’m reading Alice Fulton’s Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry for class, and I came across this chunk that really made me happy and sad all at the same time. It seemed timely too, with Easter coming up… and I think it says something special about grad students.

Here it is: CLICK ME!

Enjoy!

3 comments:

  1. wow! i am fascinated by that article now :)

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  2. That is fascinating and disturbing research. Can't they investigate cholesterol while the rabbits/subjects are still alive? Hmmm...

    But the idea of treating each other with kindness is certainly worth mentioning. Particularly, I might add, when so many first year grad students (and probably older ones as well) feel so isolated and lacking in human contact and/or loving kindness. This makes me want to go hug all my grad student friends!

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  3. That is crazy!

    Agreed, Emily, that loving kindness/compassion is a lot healthier for grad students than bookish isolation...something I think we all sometimes forget (not that any of our other habits are that healthy...especially when we're compassionate at the bar).

    I think what's also interesting about this research is how much of it is about getting the names right. Compassion and duplicity might be different descriptions for the same physical action (stroking the fur) that reduced the rabbits' anxiety/stress (I'm guessing), and hence cholesterol. But I doubt that if someone came up to me and started stroking my hair, while feeding me chocolate or fruit or fine cheese, that I would be super-comfortable--that would be really creepy!

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